Princess of Taylor wrote:I'm feeling lazy right now. Which songs are those?

Fat Bottomed Girls and Somebody To Love. I think both tracks were played at every show on the Live Killers tour, and were kind of stalwarts by then. Somebody To Love being a pretty important showcase, and integral part of a Queen gig. Really strange it was left off the album, well I think it is, anyway.

I always found it weird that it was left off Live Killers but even more strange that it was abandoned for the Magic Tour.

Yeah. When you think that the band now consider it one of their 20 Greatest, Greatest Hits, and one of their best live songs, THAT really makes the decision a strange one to drop it from the set. Saying that, they dropped DSMN from the setlist VERY quickly, like they only played it for one or two tours, and that one's been rated the best driving song EVER, once or twice.

What is left of your dream?Just the words on your stone.A man who learnt how to teach,But forgot how to learn.

Kes wrote:Yeah. When you think that the band now consider it one of their 20 Greatest, Greatest Hits, and one of their best live songs, THAT really makes the decision a strange one to drop it from the set. Saying that, they dropped DSMN from the setlist VERY quickly, like they only played it for one or two tours, and that one's been rated the best driving song EVER, once or twice.

If every decision Queen made was a shit one, they'd have never got a record deal in the first place. Brian would be writing scripts for The Sky At Night, Roger would be pulling teeth, John would be fused to the National Grid, and Freddie would probably be drawing caricatures of people around the Oxford Circus.

It's very easy for us to sit here in this digital age of knowledge passing freely on the internet, and criticise 80% of the last dozen products, but they're a business, who've successfully sold X million albums in the last ten years, without using virtually ANY of their archived assets. Getting away scott free with THAT? That's pretty f*cking clever, if you ask me.

What is left of your dream?Just the words on your stone.A man who learnt how to teach,But forgot how to learn.

If every decision Queen made was a shit one, they'd have never got a record deal in the first place. Brian would be writing scripts for The Sky At Night, Roger would be pulling teeth, John would be fused to the National Grid, and Freddie would probably be drawing caricatures of people around the Oxford Circus.

It's very easy for us to sit here in this digital age of knowledge passing freely on the internet, and criticise 80% of the last dozen products, but they're a business, who've successfully sold X million albums in the last ten years, without using virtually ANY of their archived assets. Getting away scott free with THAT? That's pretty f*cking clever, if you ask me.

Never said they weren't smart.

Just that their career is littered with odd decisions. Including STILL not having any deluxe editions with serious fan appeal on the market.

Queen I missing Mad the Swine. The bizarre track sequence on Jazz. Coming Soon instead of A Human Body on The Game. Not using a lot of the available tracks for The Works - not even as b-sides. Sun City. Not using the highlander version of A kind of Magic on the album of the same name. Bizarre track decisions for The Miracle. Including Delilah on Innuendo. Making MIH way too ballad-heavy. The Singles Collections. Too many bloody compilations. No BBC recordings issued in donkey's years. No archive material released.

And I'm not being particularly optimistic that anything radical is going to change in the near future, either.

The stuff you talk about, will no doubt appear at some time, but from a personal level, I don't think they'll be too much "new" appearing on expanded reissues, as the band will probably want to save certain things for designated future releases, and once you've got THAT set aside, there really isn't that much exciting stuff left. The term "future releases" COULD mean "Sometime after most of the fanbase has either departed this earth, or has suffered progressive hearing loss to the point of no longer being able to appreciate it.

What is left of your dream?Just the words on your stone.A man who learnt how to teach,But forgot how to learn.

Action This Day wrote:I always assumed STL was dropped for the Magic tour simply because Freddie couldn't pull it off live anymore by 1986. And also they were concentrating the set on the then current and previous albums.

I have never understood how or why Somebody To Love was dropped for the Magic Tour and Live Killers - especially as it's widely thought to be Freddie's favourite song. Not only that but it was IMO one of the tracks they consistently played brilliantly live.

It also of course meant we had no officially released live version on CD until On Fire At The Bowl (if you exclude the George Michael version)... totally bizarre...

Action This Day wrote:I always assumed STL was dropped for the Magic tour simply because Freddie couldn't pull it off live anymore by 1986. And also they were concentrating the set on the then current and previous albums.

''Freddie couldn't pull it off anymore by 1986''?

How so? Based on what?

I said I assumed he couldn't do it any more. It was his favourite Queen song and featured in every tour from 1976 until the Works tour. Therefore I assume it must have been dropped because he couldn't sing it live anymore (like DSMN). By 1986 Freddie's voice was more powerful but he had lost a lot of his upper range.

Action This Day wrote:I always assumed STL was dropped for the Magic tour simply because Freddie couldn't pull it off live anymore by 1986. And also they were concentrating the set on the then current and previous albums.

''Freddie couldn't pull it off anymore by 1986''?

How so? Based on what?

I said I assumed he couldn't do it any more. It was his favourite Queen song and featured in every tour from 1976 until the Works tour. Therefore I assume it must have been dropped because he couldn't sing it live anymore (like DSMN). By 1986 Freddie's voice was more powerful but he had lost a lot of his upper range.

I could be wrong of course. Why do you think it was dropped?

Freddie was still singing plenty of difficult tracks in 1986. He was dropping some of the higher bits down an octave and I am not sure that vocals would have been a particular reason for dropping STL.

I'd say the reason was either mundane (not enough room in the set) or to do with Freddie's (post Live Aid?) desire to avoid spending too much of the gig on the piano.

Tie Your Mother DownHeadlongThe HitmanI Want It AllKiller QueenPlay The GameMy Fairy KingSomebody To LoveA Kind Of MagicHeaven For EveryoneMother LoveLove Of My LifeAnother One Bites The DustDragon AttackRadio GaGaCrazy Little Thing Called LoveMade In HeavenBohemian RhapsodyHammer To Fall----------------------The Show Must Go OnWas It All Worth It--------------------Don't Stop Me NowWWRYWe Are The Champions